Goodbye, Osamu Kobayashi

This past weekend I learned of the death of animator and director Osamu Kobayashi from kidney cancer at the young age of 57. It’s uncommon that I follow the careers of anyone in particular in the anime industry aside from a few big-name directors because I have a poor memory for names, but there are a few folks whose work has interested me over the years and Kobayashi happens to have been one of them.

One thing I loved about his work is that it was almost always identifiable. I truly admire the Sakuga fans who can drill down into anime episode credits and tease out the uniqueness of various animated cuts; it’s a skill I wish I had but my brain just doesn’t tend to work that way. Yet Kobayashi’s ticks and quirks were always really apparent to me and being able to pick them out of a crowd was, in a weird way, a point of pride.

I would assume that people would be most familiar with him due to the full anime series he directed – Paradise Kiss, Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, and Someday’s Dreamers 2: Sora. It was in the act of viewing those series that one could get a feel for his idiosyncrasies as a director/animation director without having to navigate the full extent of his somewhat divisive animation style. In those series you can sense not only his love for music, but also his uncommon affinity for direct lip-sync which in anime often feels like kind of an oddity. All three of these series contain a lot of character intimacy – small, subtle moments that I feel his storyboarding philosophy was very fitting to depict (some other fans of ParaKiss will probably disagree with me on that front, but I suppose the lesson is that as a group we’re definitely not a monolith). Deep close-ups, characters shifting their weight from one foot to the other in lieu of dialog, it’s all right there.

What I tend to remember Kobayashi for more, though, are his guest contributions to various (and varied) anime series over the years. It’s in these cases that his personal style could be viewed as more controversial, because it absolutely did not prioritize the same ideals that much of anime holds above all. Did his depictions of characters stay on model? Nope. Was his animation smooth and pretty? Absolutely not. But personally I also think his take on the material in most of these cases was good in its own way in that it brought a different visual philosophy to some series that otherwise might have been more homogenous – pleasant enough, but missing some seasoning.

Kobayashi’s M.O. revolved around using limited animation, meaning fewer frames and a choppier or less movement-heavy final product. Anime is sort of a weird medium in that, from TV anime’s origins onward it’s been forced to do a lot with a little. Some people blame Osamu Tezuka for this; legend has it that he so passionately wanted to make Tetsuwan Atom that he kept under-cutting the amount of animation frames required per episode so that it would be cheaper to make (and thus more appealing to people putting up money to make it). Whatever the reason, the lower frame count is a sometimes-necessity that’s since become a kind of style marker for Japanese animation. While there are series being made in the modern era that have the generous scheduling and production resources needed to animate their stories more fully, there are still times where limited animation might be considered a style choice rather than a consequence of limited resources.

One situation that makes me chuckle now, but which was big time drama in the anime fandom at the time was Kobayashi’s contribution to the frequently lauded Gainax anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. If you haven’t seen the series, it could be described as a typically bombastic Hiroyuki Imaishi joint with cool robots and over-the-top physical comedy and action. Sort of a proto Studio Trigger production, if you will. After three episodes of the expected action-y material, episode 4 suddenly looked, well, different. Fans were in an uproar, basically calling the episode trash, some execs at Gainax told them to F-off, at least one person resigned… I wasn’t watching the show as it was airing, so I didn’t know much about the specifics of the criticisms. A few years later I borrowed the DVDs from a friend and when I watched episode 4 I immediately knew what had happened – Osamu Kobayashi!

I think there are perhaps arguments to be made regarding whether any particular animator’s personal style is “appropriate” for depicting every kind of story, though I don’t personally subscribe to that line of thinking. Fans watching Gurren Lagann were likely expecting a very polished animation style from start to finish, and whereas in a more subdued show Kobayashi’s animation philosophy may have felt more at home, in a mecha series with a lot of puffed-up machismo it felt like an odd choice. I feel as though a similar fan reaction occurred with the airing of Dororo (2019). Kobayashi storyboarded and directed episode 15, which I believe may have been his most recent (and final) project in the industry. I’d watched the series before I offered it up for anime club and at the time had sort of delighted in the fact that he’d had the run of an episode. On the other hand, while I was away dealing with some other responsibility I heard through the grapevine the episode got wholly dunked on during the anime club viewing. And you know… I suppose I can’t blame anyone for that, even though it broke my heart – especially since I wasn’t around to try to offer an alternative to the criticisms.

All the same, though, I think art is what we make of it, and sometimes it’s good to have our expectations challenged. Anime is a medium that is somehow held to standards that, under its current production system, are difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances. When an episode genuinely suffers in quality, most of the fandom takes note. But I think it’s important to be able to discern between a troubled production and an artistic choice, and perhaps the best I can hope to do by writing this is to prompt a few readers to stop and think about differences and oddities they might see in animation and develop a sense of curiosity about it rather than immediate disdain.

I think what I admire most about Osamu Kobayashi’s body of work is its sort of contrarian, punk-rock attitude toward the expectations we have of Japanese animation. Anime, which is so defined by style and aesthetics to the point that it can sometimes become weighed down by them, might not always seem like the best environment for indie animators with a pronounced, experimental style to strut their stuff. Yet for as much as his contributions were sometimes maligned by the greater fandom as somehow sub-par, I always saw in them an active counterpoint to what anime had sort of settled into being – a commercial storytelling product with a sometimes limited allowable aesthetic range. I really loved watching episodes I knew he’d contributed to, because they always knocked me right out of my complacency and got me to take notice. They may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but they certainly were mine.

The anime industry has lost someone with a truly unique, singular voice. I, for one, will truly miss him and his vision.

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If you’re interested in watching examples of Kobayashi’s directorial and animation work, there are several selections below that I’ve enjoyed in the past and which are available to watch.

Lupin the Third Part IV, Episode 12 – Crunchyroll
Dororo (2019), Episode 15 and ED1 – Amazon Prime
Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Episode 5b – Funimation
The Mystic Archives of Dantalian, Episode 9 – Funimation
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Episode 4 – Funimation
Mongolian Chop Squad (series) – Funimation
Someday’s Dreamers II: Sora (series) – HIDIVE